It doesn't matter
if you die petting your dog
or prowling the freeway,
you will always hear a whoosh
when you go up into the sky.

And the next thing you know
you are in deep space
walking along an old stone bridge
suspended in endless star soup
with all the latest earth leavers
and you think -
omigod those stories were all true.

All eyes gaze  
transfixed by a celestial diamond
bigger than the Great Pyramid
suspended in blueblack emptiness
pulsing with music you recognize
but cannot name.

The old man beside you says
we are not in heaven
this the line for the trip
that goes into light.

The diamond hums  
everyone's kundalini rises
and one by one
each person reaches the end of the bridge
and steps off into the vacuum of space.

They waft down like leaves
grinning like children on a merrygoround
coming to rest on the diamond
then slowly dissolving into it
and they disappear.

But they quickly reappear
bursting forth from the diamond's tip
as sparkling cherubs
caressing a billion luminous suns
each one another ride
on a celestial road trip
that never ends.

Never sits still unless
he's passed out on the floor,
playful smile hides wise eyes
as his beard talks to us
after communion with a bottle of Jack
and rolling down the rabbit hole:

*We have been going before the beginning
It's not what you know but how you apply it
Ancient knowledge is knowledge now
We follow what is right for us

Everything was a miracle once

When **** is happening, it's ****
it's only not **** once it's happened already.

Everything is general,
what we do is specific.

We're fighting to get past so many archetypes and realities:
nature vs. nurture
fight vs. flight
yin vs. yang
Right vs. left
male vs. female
analytical vs. emotional
visual vs. verbal  
majority vs. minority
experience vs. innocence

What's the point of distance
when you can see yourself on another plane of existence
and not simply see yourself consciously?

When you see yourself, who are you?
You know who you are because when you ask the universe
it will arrive in time!

A nineteen-year-old drug connoisseur,
That fiend on the roam, just the next player
making moves on his cell-phone.
Sometimes you gotta race
but you always gotta play,
Revel in The Apotheon;
Welcome to The Game.

Stoner to the bone,
Raver at heart;
Yet everthrough always the psychonaut.

Been a speed-freak, a pill-head
and almost got stuck in the k-hole,
All 'cause one day
life caught me double-dosed;
You never intend to be any of these things,
It just all happens
while your eyes are closed.

It was six in the morning**: I sat in a cab dangling on small-talk with a middle-aged white male cabbie basted in the demeanor of the over-friendly uncle. He asked me about school—I'm hyperawake, paranoid, body pulsing, feeling loose, depersonalized, and lightly psychedelic—my vision wavering as if someone had entered my skull to punch raw brain. I did a gram and a half of ******* that night; mixed lines with ketamine to simulate a proto-psychosis, but am convinced I may very well have driven myself past the point of no return. I'd been doing this strict mix for over 2 straight weeks, landing myself in out-of-body experiences and coked-out drawls on the floor like a sad, puckered monkey chewing on a lemon it mistook for an orange. Why I led myself to this existential precipice is both beyond me and totally within my rational sympathies if I pretend I am on the outside looking in.
When I was 18—drawn, for the first time—away from smalltown Powell River and into the Vancouver suburbia of Port Coquitlam, my only successful job-find was a McDonald's arched inside a Wal-Mart. The double-insult this presented me as a teenage anarchist pushed me deep into my first true emotional crisis which I only turned to accept after a particular phone call with my father in which he appealed to me to think of this stint as a 'temporary social experiment'; a chance to learn and breathe this proletarian experience from the inside out. During the pre-Christmas night-shifts, the only customers we ever had were the dark, apathetic silhouette-people Wal-Mart hired to greet the absolutely no one's walking through the door. I incessantly cleaned what was already a mirror-wet floor and made sad conversation with Rosario—the slightly autistic shift-manager with a prickly-shave of a face and an awkward sense of humor I could never come to appreciate and yet always managed to humor in polite obsequiousness. Regardless, it was a form of spread and endless boredom that began to fascinate me; it brought me to a darkness I had never quite known. It was an experience—like all experiences—to be had at least once, to the fullest and truest intensity. To be pushed with reckless sincerity.
Ever since, I have found myself pushing every limit to disembodied extremes—on occasion, to points of such profound irresponsibility or feigned responsibility that I break a particular streak and wind-up on the other dichotomous side of whatever line I unintentionally (or intentionally?) crossed (or broke?) because everything is a social experiment and I've touched the multifarious lives of overworked modernity, residential care aide, dishwasher, Christopher McCandlessesque wilderness jaunt, melancholic Kierkegaard, psychonaut, and now: a short-lived ****** inspired by the excess of Burroughs and the early beatniks all willing to **** their darlings for the sake of blood-stained posterity.
And yet meanwhile—in the cab—I can feel my headache grow perceptively wider from my left temple. Almost like a mushroom cloud over Bikini Atoll I am watching from as safe a distance as the physical body can withstand, according to some calculable hypothesis drafted by Oppenheimer himself. I am constantly amazed at how lucid I am in conversation with this friendly cabby; given that I feel as if I'm about to go ******, focusing so deftly on the way the streetlights glide across placid puddles moving only with our tires intervention—and the way I keep imagining insanity in the form of a zombie-likeness of myself strapped into an electric chair, skin melting and eyes rolling back in my head as I seizure to metaphysical death—I still laugh away short quips about the blind-leading-the-blind (he has no idea how to find my destination, and keeps pulling over to check a book road-map for 4143 Hessington Place). The only reason I am with him now is that I am venturing to see my girlfriend at her group-house past Uvic where the door is always unlocked for friends and friends-of-friends, she being the only solution to this crisis with her stash of .5 Xanax pills.
I remember those tense moments—with my body and brain as taut as a bow—he would pull over or pull out and my entire existence seemed to move through space and time as if against a wind that was perpetually in resistance—as if my entire consciousness was going to capsize into some form of overdosed darkness. Even when I exited the cab and waved a friendly goodbye to the old man, I could feel my dopamine receptors attempting to fire on empty. This caused a latent buzz that was only solved with two milligrams of alprazolam and my eyes wide shut until my head shut down.

I held her close. I knew she thought I was an idiot.

Recently I was misidentified as a psychonaut
so allow me to clarify,
I am not.

I am no longer
part of that cabal,
I am no more a psychonaut than I am a catholic;

But, as a philosopher, I will write of it.


Psychonautics is an act of configuration.
It refers to a methodology
for describing and explaining
configurations of consciousness,
And a research cabal
in which adherents explore
and harness those configurations.

The power of psychonautics
is that configurations of consciousness
have resonant effects on meaning and belief.
The psychonautic cabal emerges from a recognition of this.

Psychonautic exploration is not without risk
to the physical and psychological well-being
of the researcher, to their essence and beliefs.

An experienced and trustworthy practitioner
can provide a tether to your shared reality,
Advanced practices require caution and patience
to navigate safely; "[t]here is no casual experiment".


In the Western paradigm, classical psychonautics
was defined by contemplative and ritual techniques,
The religious or spiritual practices of a tribe or society.

Modern psychonautics has been increasingly defined by
the use of psychoactive substances, which is likely the result
of secularization, advances in pharmacy, and the war on drugs.

In contemporary society psychoactives are a valuable commodity
that many people use (or misuse) for a variety of reasons.

Some will seek out drugs they have not tried before,
Few shall devote themselves entirely, investing
their time and resources in learning about,
acquiring and assessing psychoactives.

This latter cohort aligns with the methodology
of psychonautics, they commit to understanding
through practice. Many become well-versed
in Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS),
Some academics assume this is the mark of the modern psychonaut
but it is mere specialization  rather than characteristic thereof.


As more initiates into psychonautics emerge from drug experiences
so does the cabal become more chemical. Nevertheless
it draws its adherents from a diversity of practices.

Psychonautic practices entail ontological risks,
The ranks of the cabal are full
of disordered, misguided, or warped adherents
whose heedless practice undermines
the meaningfulness of consensual reality.
A lack of formal training and mental health
likely contribute to this, although no equation
can encapsulate the qualitative experience which
compromises ontological security.


The cabal is decentralized, without singularly defined leadership
or ideals, and it operates through intrigue. Its adherents
may dispute the ethos or validity of some practices
and their corresponding configurations, and so
within the cabal there is an internal politics:

Cognitive liberals
believe anyone using responsibly
should be allowed their methodology and be able to practice.

Universalists or absolutists
believe everyone should be initiated, if not adherent.

Elitists and psychocrats
hold that only their method and practice is valid.

Cognitive dissidents
believe the methodology and its praxis must not be vested
in nation-states, corporations, or religions
if it is/they are to retain its power.

The cabal's politics of intrigue
represent an unspoken power struggle
where the stakes are unclear, if even communicable.

If the war on drugs comes to an end, psychonautics
will be redefined by its next wave of initiates,
May they be wise and kind.


I have written enough,
That part of my life is well and truly over.
My purpose here is to explore ideas, to experiment with poetry.
The place I allocate psychoactives
has always been secondary to that;

Rarely do I deign to sail the soul now
but when I do, know I am a philosopher

and do so as an inquiry into mind
rather than in service of alteration.

RECORD: QUE SERA
FROGRAM: WAX TAILOR

I DON'T understand.

There are a lot of things WE don't understand EITHER.
We NEED answers from you:

WHO did you expect to find?

WHAT did you expect to find?

...what's going to be our future?

TELL ME

It's YOUR responsibility to do something about it!

?

?

?

Well

?

?

I have the key:
Its in is the conclusion.
all I have to find is the beginning,
the end

?

The clock

"A record of the respiteful third we'll be hearing this even-ing"
-- Wax tailor, Frogman

THE LETTER ING

FREQUENCY MEAL LIST: FAVORITE QUOTATIENTS
BURDENING OF A PONDERING PSYCHONAUT: WEAR OUR MINDS

It feels as if I'm sinking
into the deep end again,
Mulling over the particulars
of nothing, I find myself
longing; wanting, things.
I stare out my window,
Curled up on its ledge
like a feline, discerning
the character of lamplight
and the quality of shadows
cast on a row of houses and
the sidewalk. I am this lost broadcast
of resounding consciousness,
I am a lonesome psychonaut,
and it's possible I'm an apostate
because I do not use drugs much
anymore. I love the dark, the rain

and the tranquility found in a storm.
I am a human with a quiet addiction.

I am a silent fiend.
I am too old to care
and too young to die.